This is a collection of websites that have been or are currently banned in the People's "Republic" of China. Some are blocked to give an advantage to domestic companies, but most are banned as they contradict with the ideologies and messages broadcast by the government controlled media.

Comments (1)

It seems crazy that governments are going so far as to ban social media. As a young employee, I use facebook almost daily and it would be extremely frustrating to have that taken away from me. There are many benefits to using social media apps, and now they will not have that resource. I found a whitepaper created by Palo Alto Networks and they have a new software that has the ability to block certain parts of social media and leave beneficial parts accessible for users. You would think that maybe these social media banning governments would be interested in this, as well as businesses. Here's the link: http://bit.ly/9twcQMTwitter

Write your comment

1) YouTube

The Chinese government have regularly imposed bans on YouTube over the past few years. The most recent blocks are in response to the escalating problems in Tibet where footage of protests and violence have been uploaded to the popular video networking site.

2) Twitter

Twitter has become the ultimate information resource for news and events that are literally only seconds old. Tweeters around the world continue to post thoughts and opinions of events unraveling in front of their eyes without censorship. For this reason, the Chinese government have banned it nationally.

3) Facebook

Facebook has been banned in China since July 2009. Similar to Twitter and YouTube, the giant social networking site allows for to much information to be accessible by the Chinese people that may show the Chinese government in negative light. Additionally, it allows for Facebook clones such as Renren and Xiaonei to gain market share.

4) Amnesty International

The Amnesty International website has been banned in China for a number of years, largely due to the problems in Tibet. The non-governmental human rights organisation poses to much of a problem to the government to allow its citizens to freely read the site and make their own informed judgments.

5) Wired

Wired magazine has regularly reported on the censorship of the internet by the Chinese government with numerous articles over the years. In return it has earned its own censorship. It really wouldn't look good if the Chinese people could keep track of their controlling state.

6) Technorati

Technorati, the "blog search engine" was originally banned back in August 2006. The mixture of the search feature and the copious amounts of links to information services and blogs around the world proved to be to much of a risk.

7) Metacafe

Metacafe is another video sharing website like YouTube that has suffered the wrath of censorship by the Chinese government. Much the same as YouTube, it is a potential liability as it allows the people of China to see footage of events happening in Tibet which are not to the governments liking.

8) Tumblr

Although a reletively small site compared to some of the other giants here, Tumblr is similar in many ways to Twitter, and has therefore been tarnished with the same brush. It is till banned in China as of May 2010.